


Blotting Out Ink Stains

by perfectlystill



Category: Little Women (2019)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22089214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/pseuds/perfectlystill
Summary: When she was a little girl, Amy often watched as Jo and Laurie ran off into the woods, over the hills and far away.
Relationships: Theodore Laurence/Josephine March
Comments: 45
Kudos: 394





	Blotting Out Ink Stains

I know about whispers; I see how you look at my sister.  
"FIRST BURN," _HAMILTON._

I have been second to Jo my whole life in everything, and I will not be the person you settle for just because you cannot have her.  
AMY MARCH, _LITTLE WOMEN._

In a fortnight, Jo travels back to New York.

She’s written another story, and despite the bits and baubles Amy has learned during their conversations, she could not tell you what it’s about. The story has the same wonderfully mundane quality of her first book, but this time it focuses on tales of the school she’s opened in Aunt March’s house. 

Amy considers she does know what it’s about, after all.

“I’m needed in New York soon,” Laurie says.

Her cutlery clanks against the china. With Laurie, Amy doesn’t have to cringe or feel embarrassed or apologize. “What for?”

“Business.”

Amy fights an unladylike facial expression -- not having to be embarrassed does not mean losing all manners. “When?”

“A fortnight from tomorrow.”

“We’ll have to cancel our attendance at the Moffat’s dinner.”

“You should still go.”

“I’m not invited, then?” Amy stabs a piece of meat with her fork, hearing the scrape against her plate.

Laurie laughs, a light musical sound. “Of course you’re invited, my lady. But Devlin’s wife has stayed in England with a sick child, and it’ll be a dull trip.”

“I am perfectly capable of finding ways to entertain myself.”

“You certainly try,” he says.

When she was a little girl, Amy often watched as Jo and Laurie ran off into the woods, over the hills and far away. 

Meanly, she’d think how unladylike Jo’s gate was, the lack of elegance when she’d throw back her head and laugh (the sound no doubt completely undignified), and the rough shove of her hands against Laurie’s shoulder before they disappeared into the brush.

They lie in bed. Amy’s head on Laurie’s chest, his arms wrapped around her. It is a position she has arranged them in. While navigating society, Laurie is more prim and proper than he was in his youth. His movements have less flourish and more purpose. He offers his elbow as they move from one room to the next, and he does not make a spectacle of them and their love. In their home, his hand brushes against the small of her back as he passes to his study. His lips brush against her cheek when she hands him a correspondence. He does not make a spectacle of them and their love in private, either. 

“I’ve offered to take Jo to New York,” Laurie says, a tangle in his throat. 

Amy swallows.

“She was heading there anyway, and instead of taking the train, we can travel together.”

“Very practical,” Amy whispers into the dark.

“I thought so, too.”

“Wasn’t she due in New York two days before you leave?”

“I’ll leave early.”

Amy wonders, if he’ll be spending extra time in the city, wouldn’t it be nice for her to go, too? While Jo is negotiating and finalizing, Amy and Laurie can wander around shops and try new restaurants. They fell in love abroad, and while New York isn’t Europe, there’s a magic to being someplace else. 

Massachusetts contains too many ghosts and too much baggage. 

But if the source of the baggage is sharing their carriage, Amy isn’t sure it counts as leaving it behind.

Amy watched Laurie often.

A consequence of watching Laurie was watching Laurie watching Jo. 

There was always a private joy in his face, situated lovingly next to a tender longing. 

He still looks at Jo with joy, love, tenderness and longing, but it’s rearranged itself into a private puzzle Amy can’t piece together. 

She worries it might be a puzzle she does not want to solve.

Amy stays home.

She refuses to degrade herself by begging.

She knows where she’s not wanted.

Amy runs a lovely silk scarf through her fingers. It feels like water caressing her skin. 

“That’s beautiful,” Meg says at her shoulder. 

“I think it would look quite handsome around Laurie’s neck, don’t you?” It’s black, a dapper, almost coin-like, silver pattern adorning it. It’s busier than what he normally wears these days, reminding her of a pattern he would have donned in his youth. 

It is true that much of Laurie’s youthful vibrancy has tempered. Amy is proud of how far he has come, rarely succumbing to overindulgence or excess in liquor or laughter or other frivolous things. But much as he urges her to draw him on a chaise or create a portrait of Bess, sketching their daughter as she turns one and then two and then three, she wants him to reconnect with a piece of himself she found so enchanting once upon a time. 

Once upon a time, like the start of a play Jo would scribble for them. 

“I do,” Meg agrees. “You must purchase it for him.”

Amy’s smile curves mischievous. “I must, must I?”

Meg’s smile is chagrined, but the shake of her head amused.

Amy makes her way around Plumfield toward the scampering of feet and the booming musicality of Jo’s instruction. She finds the children standing on a makeshift stage. Jo has a script in one hand and a mock sword in the other. 

Laurie stands a few paces left of her, paper mustache over his top lip and dreadful pink fabric thrown across his shoulders. She watches his shoulders shake with a chuckle before Jo points her sword at him.

“To the stage, Ms. Wigglesword,” she instructs. The delight in her voice is poorly masked. 

Amy’s husband lumbers onto the poor strip of stage at the front of the room, limbs kinetic, a drama to the movement as he spins, tucking his shoulders back and lifting his chin. “Fetch me a--” he begins, voice airy and lifted until he spots Amy. A very serious wrinkle forms between his brow. “Is everything all right?”

She blinks, feeling caught instead of the other way ‘round. “Oh, yes. Yes, everything is quite well.” Her purpose forgotten, she waves them on, a flush beginning to heat her cheeks same as the one dusting her husband’s. 

Her sister’s brow wrinkles the same as Laurie’s, cheeks red with heat, but the real worrisome revelation is the telling guilt of her frown. 

Amy’s skirt swishes when she turns, heels clicking against the wood as she darts away; a princess leaving a ball.

Laurie has a book open on his lap, leg folded up, ankle over his knee. It’s a beautiful copy of _Sylvia’s Lovers_ , a book Amy considers almost torrid and melodramatic despite having never read it herself. 

She fiddles with the cross-stitch in her hand. She doesn’t much care for it, but it demonstrates and teaches patience, and she’d like to have something for Bess’s room, so she continues, glancing up at her husband, his chin perched in his palm. 

“I don’t know if you should be reading that.”

“It’s entertaining, my lady.”

“Would you read it aloud to me?” she asks, the silence of the parlor emphasizing the coming ache in her knuckles. She thinks of Jo’s aching knuckles. She wonders if Laurie ever touches her hand and does the same. 

He obliges, voice an even, smooth melody to her ears, hoarseness in the back of his throat that must have come from participating in the play at Plumfield. 

When Laurie pauses, flipping a page, Amy asks, “Did you have a pleasant time, then?”

“She believes her love to be dead, which isn’t very pleasant.”

“My lord,” she says; it is difficult to speak the endearment without a smile forming on her mouth. “At Plumfield, with Jo.”

His mouth curves into something forcibly light. “Ah, yes. Ms. Wigglesword’s evil plot was stopped by the Pickwick Detectives.”

“Jo wrote it, then.”

“It’s quite comical. An antidote to this,” he says, gesturing to the book in his lap, closed over his thumb to keep his place. “I’m sure she’ll lend you the pages.”

Amy does not want the pages. 

She wants answers to questions she doesn’t dare ask.

They sit for dinner at Orchard House.

Jo is in the kitchen with Marmee. Amy insisted she help, only to be shooed away due to a fever she caught a few days ago. She feels perfectly fine now, but she won’t argue with Marmee about sickness and health. 

“I don’t know why we insist on eating here,” Father says. 

Laurie chuckles. “Our house is always open, but Orchard House feels more like home to me.”

“Me too,” Amy agrees. 

“Has Jo never offered?” Laurie asks.

“She would be a terrible hostess,” Amy says.

“She would be dreadful, my lady.”

“Stop that, you two,” Father scolds, a hearty laugh brimming in his eyes. “You’re quite right, but even if she’s replaced the stuffy, empty place with children’s laughter and learning, the memory of my dear sister keeps the place drafty.” 

A defense of Aunt March curls on Amy’s tongue.

“It would be twice the work to help Jo prepare the meal, and she’d still find a way to ruin it. I’m quite sure of that,” Father adds fondly.

“You’re quite right,” Jo agrees, pushing through the door with a bowl of baked rice pudding.

“Everyone be nice,” Marmee scolds in good humor, an echo of Father as she follows with the wine Amy and Laurie brought over.

“We’re always nice, dear,” Father says. 

Jo sits across the table. Her eyes flitting between Amy and Laurie before speaking.

The scarf Amy bought Laurie is knotted around her sister’s neck. 

Amy does not hear what she says, but Laurie laughs.

Jo and Laurie swapped clothing constantly when they were younger. 

Amy never understood. 

Jo had women’s garments, and Laurie had men’s, and the free exchange between them seemed inappropriate for that reason, among many others. She wondered if Laurie’s fingers brushed against Jo’s throat to steal her scarf. If her sister unbuttoned Laurie’s waistcoat, knuckles against his chest before she slipped the fabric through her own arms, still warm from his body. 

In a fit of passion, Amy grabbed a blouse she had seen on Laurie lying among her sister’s things, holding it to her nose and inhaling, hoping for a scent of the boy she loved.

She caught a whiff of her sister and nothing else.

Amy looks at the night sky, clear and dotted with stars. The evening air is warm and lovely, Laurie offering his elbow as they approach the carriage.

“What a wonderful dinner, don’t you think, my lord?”

The duck was moist and divine; the currant wine sweet and delicious. The conversation had been lively and fun instead of dull, and nobody attempted passive-aggressive comments about any of Amy’s sisters. A rarer occurrence in polite society than Amy considers to be particularly polite. 

“Very nice.” He rests a hand over hers, as soft and dainty as ever.

He helps her into the carriage, and they banter back-and-forth about the Reynaurd’s questionable politics. Amy is quite proud of both of them for holding their tongues at dinner. It is impolite to argue with their hosts and beneficial for business to shelve the discussion for a later date. 

It’s a good evening, and Amy feels close to Laurie. He is her husband, she never wants for anything, and she loves him. 

They pass Plumfield, and Laurie turns, looking out. Amy does the same. A candle flickers in the attic. Jo must be writing again; last week, there was ink staining the side of her pinky at Sunday dinner.

“Teddy,” Amy tries, the syllables clumsy and foreign on her tongue. 

His head snaps to her almost violently. “Don’t.”

“I was simply trying it out.” She rolls her shoulders back. “You are my husband. I should call you as I please.”

“If you desire, you may have ‘Dora.’” It’s mean. He stares out the carriage again, but the petulant, young boy rears his head at her. 

She will not entertain him. 

“You are my husband,” Amy repeats. Her voice shakes, and she clenches her hands together in her lap. “There should not be part of you another woman has that I do not.”

He glances at her briefly. 

He says nothing.

Amy thinks well enough of her sister to know that she is not going to bed with her husband. 

The sting: she cannot be certain that if their roles were reversed (an impossibility and a futile exercise), Jo would spare her the same certainty.

Jo and Laurie acted in tandem, their bodies extensions of one another. 

Amy knows she had been jealous of the easy affection between them, wanting to be folded into their tangle of limbs while fearing what it would mean to be part of them. She was not in want of touch; she garnered plenty of hugs and kisses from Marmee, Hannah and her sisters, plenty of playful (and not so playful) wrestling matches with Jo. 

Upon return from Europe, a wedding band on her finger, she noted the difference between her husband and sister. It is difficult to describe the difference as anything other than a lack, something that had once been there now gone. 

Amy credited the change in behavior to maturation. They were no longer children acting in spirited, unfit ways, leaning on each other as one might lean against a wall. It was a change in their relationship and regard for one another, Laurie in love with Amy instead of Jo.

It doesn’t strike her until later -- until Laurie reaches out as if to ruffle Jo’s hair, palm halting halfway to its perceived destination, until Jo steps away from a hug that lasts not too long, as before, but not even long enough to be considered routine -- that maybe instead of being subsumed into their relationship as she had once wished (a lie in and of itself, as she had wished to take Jo’s place in Laurie’s affections as much as she had wished to be a part of their duo), that she has wedged herself in the middle of it. 

It strikes Amy that the desire to touch hasn’t escaped them so much as it has been forcefully curbed.

“Allow me to walk you back,” Laurie offers.

“I am perfectly capable of making my way home myself, Teddy,” Jo insists.

Amy sighs. “Don’t be silly. The ground is slick with ice, it’s dark, and there have been reports of robbers in the area.”

“It is a short walk, and I am not an invalid.”

“Not yet,” Laurie chirps, lips pressed against a grin Amy can see clear as day. 

“Please, Jo. It would give me peace of mind. You don’t want to worry your little sister, now do you?”

“I might,” she counters. “Worrying would do you some good.”

“I’ll wrinkle.”

Jo relents. 

A few years ago she would not have. 

Laurie presses a kiss to Amy’s cheek, whispering that she’ll look as beautiful as ever with crow’s feet around her eyes. 

Amy watches them on their walk to Plumfield, candle flickering in the window. Jo’s head tosses to the side as she laughs, and when Amy can no longer make out the slopes of their noses, Laurie offers Jo an elbow. She nudges it away.

Before they turn, almost out of sight, Jo takes his arm.

Amy sips her flute of champagne as her eyes traverse the dimly lit room. 

Laurie stuck by her side for a good while before being ushered away with the other gentlemen to do gentlemenly things in the study. 

“Mrs. Laurence!”

“Bertha, please don’t be absurd.”

She laugh, elbow brushing against Amy’s before she settles into a more proper posture. “How’s Bess doing?”

“Oh, wonderfully. We wouldn’t have been able to attend tonight otherwise, but Meg is caring for her this evening.”

“Your sister? Not Ms. Wilson?”

“I’ve never met anyone better with children than Meg,” Amy says, saccharine and steely. 

Meg was not invited tonight, a terrible consequence of her fortune, or lack thereof. It’s unfair, but Meg knew as such when she married for love and nothing else, and she lives with it as best she can. 

“Bess is delightful company as well,” Amy continues. 

“She is a fine young woman.” Bertha’s smile is tight. “I saw your sister with Mr. Laurence just the other day.”

“My husband or his grandfather?” 

A needless question. Amy already knows the Mr. Laurence and sister in question.

“Your husband of course. A mighty fine bickering match they got into at the post office.”

“I hope it wasn’t dreadfully embarrassing,” Amy says as heat flushes her cheeks, already dreadfully embarrassed. 

“It was quite the spectacle, hushed voices not doing much to ease the tension,” Bertha says before sipping from her flute of champagne, eyebrows judgmentally raised. “You’ll be pleased to know your husband put an end to it. Let her pay her way herself.”

“It is very difficult to convince Jo that a gift isn’t charity once she’s made up her mind.”

It is also very difficult to find an instance where Laurie has not conceded to Jo’s wishes, even more difficult than finding an instance where Laurie and Jo’s wishes have diverged -- one such instance stands out among the rest. 

Amy does not know if it is because Laurie would concede anything for her sister’s happiness and approval, and if in the end, he conceded part of his own.

“Does playing theatre with Jo and her students bring back memories of childhood?”

Laurie’s jaw clenches. 

“If anything,” he says, “spending time with Jo is a reminder of all that I cannot return to.”

Amy wonders if he knows how regretful and cruel he sounds.

He returns home minutes later than Amy would have expected. 

“Did Jo arrive safely?”

“She tried to lose me halfway there. She failed, but she’s contented.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Amy smiles, taking her husband’s face in her hands. His cheeks are cold, and when she kisses him, his lips are cold, too. She reaches up to fix his hair, disheveled from his hat. There lives a fresh ink stain along the curve of his forehead by his left temple. “She offered you a brief respite from the cold, I presume?”

A ghost of a smile turns his mouth. “The cold, yes, but Jo has never offered me respite from much else.”

It is a reality just as much as it is a fiction. 

She drops her hands, burned.

It is a lucky thing, she thinks, that she did not marry solely for love.

Amy loves Laurie. Laurie loves her.

It is a lucky thing.


End file.
